TO SEEK to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We
have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down
upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and
in time. We will first speak how the natural inclination and habit to be
angry, may be attempted and calmed. Secondly, how the particular motions
of anger may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing mischief.
Thirdly, how to raise anger, or appease anger in another.
For the first; there is no other way but to meditate, and ruminate well
upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's life. And the best time
to do this, is to look back upon anger, when the fit is thoroughly over.
Seneca saith well, That anger is like ruin, which breaks itself upon
that it falls. The Scripture exhorteth us to possess our souls in
patience. Whosoever is out of patience, is out of possession of his
soul. Men must not turn bees;
... animasque in vulnere ponunt.
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the
weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old
folks, sick folks. Only men must beware, that they carry their anger
rather with scorn, than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be
above the injury, than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man
will give law to himself in it.
For the second point; the causes and motives of anger, are chiefly
three. First, to be too sensible of hurt; for no man is angry, that
feels not himself hurt; and therefore tender and delicate persons must
needs be oft angry; they have so many things to trouble them, which more
robust natures have little sense of. The next is, the apprehension and
construction of the injury offered, to be, in the circumstances thereof,
full of contempt: for contempt is that, which putteth an edge upon
anger, as much or more than the hurt itself. And therefore, when men are
ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, they do kindle their
anger much. Lastly, opinion of the touch of a man's reputation, doth
multiply and sharpen anger. Wherein the remedy is, that a man should
have, as Consalvo was wont to say, telam honoris crassiorem. But in all
refrainings of anger, it is the best remedy to win time; and to make a
man's self believe, that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet
come, but that he foresees a time for it; and so to still himself in the
meantime, and reserve it.
To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, there be
two things, whereof you must have special caution. The one, of extreme
bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate and proper; for
cummunia maledicta are nothing so much; and again, that in anger a man
reveal no secrets; for that, makes him not fit for society. The other,
that you do not peremptorily break off, in any business, in a fit of
anger; but howsoever you show bitterness, do not act anything, that is
not revocable.
For raising and appeasing anger in another; it is done chiefly by
choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to
incense them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you
can find out, to aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the
contraries. The former to take good times, when first to relate to a man
an angry business; for the first impression is much; and the other is,
to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury from the
point of contempt; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or
what you will.